Where Did Solomon Build the Temple?

Ernest Martin sparked the alternate temple site movement when he published The Temples that Jerusalem Forgot in 2000.1 Bob Cornuke published Temple in 2014 to promote the same idea, although with a much smaller temple and temple mount. Both authors claim to be following the Bible, historical sources, and archaeology to uncover truths that have been forgotten for centuries. However, when we compare their claims to the Bible, history, and archaeology, we find that Martin and Cornuke have been highly selective in their use of each of these sources. While a more detailed article is forthcoming that addresses many of the major arguments for this position, this brief article will highlight a few examples of where these alternate temple site proponents misuse Scripture, history, and archaeology. We will also see the impossibility of placing the temple in the city of David as Martin and Cornuke advocate.

Misusing Scripture

Since the Bible is our authority, and since Martin and Cornuke claim their views are based on Scripture, then that is where we will begin our study. There are several clues in Scripture as to the temple’s location, but only one verse explains precisely where it was built.

Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to David his father, at the place that David had appointed, on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. (2 Chronicles 3:1, emphasis added)

According to this verse, Solomon built the temple on Mount Moriah. Since this is so clearly stated in the text, one would expect Martin and Cornuke to discuss this fact, but they do not. Martin does not mention the verse in his nearly 500-page book. He even includes a chapter titled “Where Did Solomon Build the Temple?” in which he does not cite a single verse of Scripture. Instead, he wrote nine pages to debate the meaning of a passage from Josephus that is not even about the temple’s location.

Why would someone deliberately remove Scripture’s most relevant statement on the subject?

Unlike Martin, Cornuke included the verse in his book. Yet, in all four instances, he used an ellipsis to replace the following words: “On Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to David his father.”2 He did the same thing on his website and in a video he produced on the subject.3 Why would someone deliberately remove Scripture’s most relevant statement on the subject? If these men truly want to show what the Bible says about the location of Solomon’s temple, why do they avoid or edit the one verse that tells us precisely where it was built? Furthermore, when the construction of Solomon’s temple was completed, the elders of Israel brought “up the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of the city of David” (2 Chronicles 5:2, emphasis added), and then they placed it in the inner sanctuary (v. 7). In other words, the temple was above and outside of the city of David, which is where Mount Moriah and the Temple Mount stand.

This makes perfect sense as 2 Chronicles 3:1 states that the temple was built on the site of a threshing floor. Threshing floors were usually built on higher ground and outside city walls where the wind would blow away the chaff as it was separated from the wheat. This is seen elsewhere in Scripture. For example, after staying with Boaz at the threshing floor, Ruth left and “went into the city” (Ruth 3:15). And Gideon resorted to threshing “wheat in the winepress to hide it from the Midianites” (Judges 6:11) since a threshing floor would have been at an elevated location, making him easy to spot.

We saw that Cornuke removed key words from 2 Chronicles 3:1 to build his case, but in another place, his book added to Scripture to back his view. In the appendix of the revised edition, William Welty offered a defense of Cornuke’s view and quoted the ISV, his personal translation of 1 Kings 8:1–5 (erroneously cited as 2 Kings). This passage parallels 2 Chronicles 5 and states that Solomon and the elders of Israel brought “up the ark of the Lord,” (v. 4) “out of the city of David” (v. 1) and “up” (v. 4) to “the inner sanctuary” (v. 6) of the temple. Of course, this fits the historical view perfectly, but Welty added the words “to Jerusalem” in v. 4 to invent support for his strange interpretation of the passage. He claims that the Israelites conducted a “one-time end-of-life-cycle ceremony for the ancient, but now outdated Tabernacle.”4 Thus, Welty argued that Israelites moved the ark and tabernacle out of the city of David to Jerusalem because of lack of space, and then they moved those items back into the into the city of David where he claims the temple was built. However, neither the Hebrew text nor the English translations (other than Welty’s ISV) supports this chain of events, since the text plainly states that the ark and tabernacle were taken out of the city of David and brought up to the temple.

Those who remove key words from Scripture or add words to the text should be reminded of the serious warnings in the Bible about adding to or taking away from God’s Word (Deuteronomy 4:2; Proverbs 30:6; Revelation 22:18–19). Also, if someone resorts to these tactics to support his or her view, it is a good indication that they do not have good arguments for their position.

Misusing History

Martin and Cornuke also frequently misrepresent extra-biblical historical sources like Josephus, and their models depend heavily on distortions and misunderstandings of his writings. One example will be given here, and in a forthcoming detailed article, we will address other crucial examples.5

In his book’s introduction, Martin stated that he reached his conclusion about the alternate temple location “after noticing the eyewitness account of Eleazar,” who described the extent of Jerusalem’s destruction and supposedly indicated that the Temple Mount was Fortress Antonia.6 Similarly, Cornuke called Eleazar “a very important eyewitness to events described in this book.”7 There are several problems with these claims.

First, in the passage where Josephus quoted Eleazar, he was not describing the Temple Mount. Instead, the “monument” he mentioned was Herod’s palace, and he described how the Romans had allowed portions of it to remain standing, namely the towers of Phasaelus, Hippicus, and Mariamne.8 Part of one of these towers still stands today near the Jaffa Gate on the Western Hill—not at the Temple Mount or in the city of David.

Second, Eleazar was not an eyewitness to Jerusalem’s destruction. According to Josephus, Eleazar was a zealot who fled the city before the Romans besieged it and then “acted the part of a tyrant at Masada.”9

Such hearsay would never qualify as eyewitness testimony in a court of law, and it should not convince anyone of the alternate temple location view.

Finally, Josephus never heard Eleazar say these words, as they were allegedly spoken on the evening the rebels at Masada took their own lives before the Romans breached the mountaintop fortress. Perhaps Josephus learned of the speech from one of the few survivors who hid in a cistern. Although it is quite possible that Josephus simply fabricated the speech, as “the ascription of heroic speeches to the heroes of history was a literary device that characterized ancient historiography.”10

So, Martin’s compelling “eyewitness account” and Cornuke’s “very important eyewitness” is a misinterpretation of what is, at best, a secondhand report of a speech made by someone who did not witness any part of the Roman siege and destruction of Jerusalem. Such hearsay would never qualify as eyewitness testimony in a court of law, and it should not convince anyone of the alternate temple location view.

Misusing Archaeology

Although Martin and Cornuke claim archaeology is extremely important, they ignore the vast array of archaeological evidence corroborating the historical view. Indeed, shortly after claiming that he holds “archaeological evidence to be of extreme importance,” Martin wrote, “I do not refer to any archaeological results because Jesus said there would not even be foundational stones left of Jerusalem and the Temple.”11 This response distorts the meaning of Jesus’ teaching that the temple and its associated buildings would be thrown down (Matthew 24:1–2).12

Cornuke implied that Israeli archaeologist Eli Shukron agrees with his position. He included two sections of his book describing a tour he was on where the archaeologist supposedly all but told him the temple was in the city of David.13 However, Shukron has always maintained that the site they toured dates to Abraham’s time and may be where Melchizedek worshipped God. Also, he has repeatedly rejected Cornuke’s view, stating adamantly, “There is no evidence that the Temple was in the City of David. The Temple known as Solomon’s Temple was absolutely on the Temple Mount. I have no question about that.”14

Martin and Cornuke typically avoid discussing the arguments against their view and the archaeological finds that contradict it. For example, they do not mention any of the numerous discoveries demonstrating that the historical Temple Mount is indeed the place where Israel’s temples stood. In the forthcoming detailed article, we will discuss several archaeological discoveries that the alternate temple proponents cannot adequately explain.15

Misunderstanding Geography

The impossibility of Martin’s and Cornuke’s models is clearly seen when their proposed temples are placed in the city of David. Cornuke squeezes a smaller temple compound into the city of David, right on top of David’s palace, numerous first-century buildings, and a massive rubbish heap from that time. This shrunken temple mount would not have room for the court of women, the court of Gentiles, or the tens of thousands of sacrifices offered during festivals.

Martin’s temple model requires an impossibly large platform rising straight up from the floor of the Kidron Valley that would have been nearly twice the volume of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Disregarding the fact that stone structures cannot support straight vertical walls 450 feet high without collapsing, where is the evidence for such a massive structure? How was it built over the top of existing structures without damaging them? How did the Jews create a garbage dump under such a structure? How did it fail to block the Kidron Brook and create a lake between the Mount of Olives and the historical Temple Mount? What happened to the hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of enormous stones required to build something so massive?

Conclusion

This introductory look at the alternate temple proposals from Martin and Cornuke has shown that neither man can successfully establish his view because they contradict Scripture, history, and archaeology. Rather, proponents of these views avoid key passages of Scripture, distort Josephus’ words, and ignore the findings of archaeologists.

These men use several other arguments, and a more detailed analysis is needed to address these. This brief article shows that they do not deal faithfully with source materials, most notably Scripture. If we are to be like the Bereans in Acts 17:11, we must compare all ideas with Scripture—even when they come from someone who seems to be sincere and trustworthy.